


Rules Were Made For Breaking

by TwoCatsTailoring



Series: The Lives Within [17]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Babies, Breastfeeding, F/M, Friendship, Making Up, Post-Dawn, Pushy Friends, Second Chances, anguements, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 10:04:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13479150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoCatsTailoring/pseuds/TwoCatsTailoring
Summary: TL;DR background info: takes place post-dawn, Danica married Gladio as soon as he got back from Insomnia and was pregnant before he left (didn’t tell him that tho.) Penny is Not Impressed. Here’s the bios forDanicaandPenny.This work places Gladio in a very negative light, and everyone should realize that before they begin.





	Rules Were Made For Breaking

**Author's Note:**

> TL;DR background info: takes place post-dawn, Danica married Gladio as soon as he got back from Insomnia and was pregnant before he left (didn’t tell him that tho.) Penny is Not Impressed. Here’s the bios for [Danica](http://twocatstailoring.tumblr.com/post/169452359549/danica-colon-age-24-birthplace-lestallum) and [Penny](http://twocatstailoring.tumblr.com/post/169452366279/penelope-key-age-23-birthplace-altissia).
> 
> This work places Gladio in a very negative light, and everyone should realize that before they begin.

**One, Don’t Pick Up the Phone**.

“It’s him again, isn’t it?” Penny’s mouth turned down hard at the corners and she registered that Wedge, two loaded plates in hand, did a smooth turn and retreated straight back to the kitchen instead of bringing dinner out right then.

 The expression on his face would have made her smile if it hadn’t been for the rolling jolt of anger that shot through her veins as she watched Danica checking her humming phone. “Don’t answer it.”

Danica shot her a look of weariness, stopping just short of rolling her eyes as she shifted a sleeping Caris up onto her shoulder. “He wasn’t drunk the last time.”

“But the forty-odd times before that, he was.” Penny reminded her, crossing her arms.  

Danica sighed and gave Caris’s diapered backside a gentle pat when she gurgled at the shift. “I know that.” She was trying to sound patient with her friend. Penny had a really good reason for her zero-tolerance policy when it came to Gladio. It was just hard to convince her that once didn’t equal always - she just knew that there was still good in him. “He still deserves a chance.”

One time sober was a good start, even if it had taken him months to get there. Caris helped, she guessed. After all, she was the cutest baby born in the history of Eos. Danica hit the button to answer his call and silently hoped for the best.

Penny was going to break a tooth if she stayed at the table and listened to one side of this phone conversation. Her jaw set hard and tight, she rose and headed in the direction of the kitchen where Wedge was still hiding out. And eating peas straight out of the pot.

He cocked his head to the side and raised his eyebrows as she huffed against the counter. “You know,” he began in his quiet way, holding out a spoonful of peas, “it is her decision.”

Penny pressed her lips together in a frown before opening her mouth and accepting the offered spoon. “I know that,” she groused, her mouth full, “but I can’t just sit here and watch….”

“While she might be making the same mistakes you did, and does it with a baby in her arms. I know,” Wedge leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her temple. “But it’s not your job to stop her.”

Penny didn’t say anything for a while and Wedge stayed silent as well, preferring to continue eating peas while she mulled his words over. Just when she was about to break the silence, admitting that he was right, Danica rounded the corner into the kitchen, her cheeks a little pink, smiling nervously.

“Gladio wants to meet her. He’s coming by tomorrow morning at ten.”

Two things kept Penny from launching into orbit in her anger. One was the sleeping infant in Danica’s arms - house rule, you let sleeping babies lie. And the other was the sudden, painful grip of Wedge’s hand on her arm.

**Two, Don’t Let Him In.**

“You do not have to do this.” There was a different edge in Penny’s voice this time around. And the statement, made so many times in the past several hours, had morphed as well. From a Don’t do this to a Please don’t do this on to an attempt at a reassuring You don’t have to do this and now to this version of the statement that resembled something very close to begging. 

But Danica remained unmoved. Gladio was coming this morning, would be here in about ten minutes if his text message was to be believed, and she was going to let him come. What Penny didn’t seem to realize, and Danica didn’t have the ability to explain in a way that would make her understand beyond her fears, was that Danica did have a whole lot of reservations about this meeting.

Caris - fresh from a bath and currently gorging herself at her mom’s breast - was three months old. Danica walked out before she’d been born and Gladio had never seen her in person. He’d showed up at the hospital, drunk and inclined to argue with security when Danica refused to let him in. Since then, he’d asked for pictures of Caris, thanked her for naming her after his sister, and most recently asked for updates on how big she was and how she was growing.

Danica had given him all of that, but had still refused to let him see their daughter because every time he got in touch, he was some level of intoxicated.

Penny knew that. Knew that she’d been eaten up by the fact that Gladio just couldn’t seem to be getting his life together. And Penny knew that, had Gladio not been stone cold sober this last phone call, Danica already had a lawyer lined up to file for divorce. 

Seven months should have been long enough for him to decide what he wanted his life to look like, after all. She was willing to give him time to work through his issues but the decision should have been made by now. 

Which was why this meeting was important to her. She wasn’t going to pretend that she loved him the way she once did. She still cared about what happened to him and wanted for him to work on his issues so that he could function again. And she’d be thrilled to help him get to that point any way that she could. But no part of helping him included putting herself in a position for him to be able to hit her again. Once was one time too many.

Caris turned her head and gurgled, blowing milk bubbles and whacking herself in the head with her hand. Danica gave the baby a Look and shifted her up onto her shoulder as she mumbled, “Lunch cart’s closed, I guess.”

“Seriously, Dan. You do not have to do this.”

Danica sighed as she patted Caris’s back. “Pen, I know you’re worried and I love you for it. And I get it.” Penny opened her mouth to say something but Danica cut her off, “How many times did you wake up screaming in the middle of the night and I was there to tell you you were safe and that Blaine can’t hurt you anymore? I get it.”

“Then why are you inviting Gladio back in?” Penny sounded tired now, kind of how she sounded on long nights in the ER when a patient had almost survived.  
Danice crossed the floor to her friend and grabbed her hand. “Because he deserves a chance to get better.”

“Just one, right?” Penny’s smile was unconvincing and only included one side of her mouth, but she was trying at least.

“Only the one.”

Three, Don’t Be His Friend.

Penny had been doing such a good job. She’d kept her mouth shut, even to Wedge, when the playdates started. She’d not said a word against it when Danica had let Gladio take Caris to storytime. Alone. She’d even managed to genuinely laugh when Gladio had called asking Danica if Caris was in the next size up in clothes because he’d found the most adorable outfit for her to wear on Festival Night.

The laughter was because it had been a marlboro costume, complete with little tentacles as the arms and legs that wobbled and waved every time she moved. 

And she’d kept her mouth shut because he was doing better. He hadn’t shown up drunk once and Thursday afternoons were off the table for him to spend time with his daughter because he had a standing appointment with a therapist. And if he tended to be a little shaky on Friday mornings, well. Penny could forgive that. Talking about traumatic stuff was hard.

But she’d been doing so well and now that was all over.

“What do you mean,  _staying over_?”

Danica gave her a blank look. “If he’s going to be a part of her life, he needs to know what having a little kid in the house overnight is like.”

Penny pressed her lips together tightly and willed herself to breathe like a normal human being. She wasn’t even out of her work uniform yet, Wedge was due in under an hour, and Danica had decided to spend the night at Gladio’s house because if there was one parenting task that he could not do it was be the midnight snack provider to a seven month old, extremely stubborn baby.

And Penny did not miss the fact that Danica was skirting around the very obvious fact that there was no longer any talk of a divorce happening so it wasn’t really a shared-custody situation she was talking about.

She wanted to say something horrible. Wanted to scream and rail and warn and beg and plead Danica not to do this. That three months of good behavior didn’t amount to much of anything when she still had the scar on her cheek from the last night she spent with him. That leopards don’t change their spots, that it’s not worth the risk to herself or to Caris, that Penny knew if she went now that she’d be back in his bed and in his house and in his life full time as his nursemaid and keeper again.

But she didn’t. Dan put up with a lot from her, had put up with a lot from Gladio too but Gladio didn’t have the sense to stop and Penny was damned if she was going to get lumped into the same category as that asshole. So she kept her mouth clamped shut and left the room, shedding her scrubs in her bedroom as she fumed silently and well away from Danica. 

She did have a date to get ready for after all. 

It was the train of thought that followed that one that had her rummaging in her bedside table drawer and padding back down the hall in nothing but her underwear to plunk a box of condoms next to Danica’s arm.

“If you are going to do this, at least be safer about it.”

“Pen! I’m not going to fuck him!” Danica looked legitimately aghast at the suggestion, but her cheeks were going just a little bit pink.

Penny leveled a stare at her and frowned, one hand on her hip. The pink deepened to almost red before Danica caved, grabbed the box, and groused on her way out of the room, “Hope  _you’ve_  got a backup supply.”

“Those were my backup. Thankfully, Wedge knows to bring his own.” Penny had to smile at Danica’s retreating back as her groan of disgust echoed down the hallway.


End file.
